thusspakezuska | February 23, 2007So, they've been handing out this award for 40 years. For 39 of them, they couldn't see fit to find any woman qualified to receive it. But FINALLY! Yay! Three cheers for Frances E. Allen, 2006 winner of the Turing Award and its $100,000 prize!
She only had to wait until she was 75, and retired for 4 years, to be honored for her work. I guess they just didn't notice her anytime during the last four decades. Lucky for her she lived long enough for the judges to find her.
Plus, she must be the ONLY woman up until now who has done anything deserving of the Turing Award. Unless,…
thusspakezuska | February 22, 2007Absinthe has asked me to do a mirror post of her post on this issue. So, here it is.
Several months ago I told you about the Kay Weber v Fremilab lawsuit in my post Class action lawsuits. If you read the link to her federal court Complaint contained in that post, you will see that she lived through a decade of appalling sexual harassment and even more appalling retaliation when she complained to the lab (she was successively demoted over the course of a decade from being one of the top women at the lab to eventually working under the supervision of a tech...she was ultimately fired…
thusspakezuska | February 22, 2007There's a new feed available on Science Blogs, and it's called ScienceBlogs Select. Basically, what you get if you subscribe to this feed is the very best of all of Science Blogs. Each of us flags two or three posts per week to go into this feed, something that we consider to be exceptionally witty or funny or one of our more thought-provoking posts, or something that's very newsy. If you subscribe to this feed you'll be getting the cream of the crop from the whole range of science, from some of the best science writers around.
I'm telling you, it's good stuff!
thusspakezuska | February 22, 2007The other day I wrote
Previously, primate groups were generally seen to be composed of harems, ignoring the active roles of females in mate choice and aggressive sexual behavior with multiple mates. But the entry of women with a feminist perspective into this field opened up the kinds of observations that were made.
Another great myth we've always had handed to us is that of Man the Hunter. Now comes evidence from the world of primatology that upsets that apple cart. Carl Zimmer at The Loom writes:
Today the journal Current Biology publishes yet another piece of the puzzle: female…
thusspakezuska | February 22, 2007Perhaps you will recall a somewhat controversial post awhile back delicately titled The Origin of "Puke On His Shoes". In that post I described the persistent, annoying, unwanted attentions of a male passenger on an Amtrak train, despite my (what should have been obvious) signal that I was completely uninterested in him: I was reading a book, and continued reading it as he yammered away, hitting on me.
Women commenters more or less completely understood my tactic, whereas some male commenters felt this was unfair and I should have been more straightforward. I suppose they were suggesting…
thusspakezuska | February 22, 2007I've been away for awhile enjoying my usual spate of migraines that pop up at the end of a botox treatment cycle. On top of that I'm getting physical therapy for neck and shoulder pain caused by the chronic migraines; being on the computer seems to aggravate it. I'll try to ease myself back in....
...So here's a short post: The daily Chronicle report had a wonderful piece on negotiating academic job offers. Lots of very practical tips, and a link to the AAUP salary surveys. Print this one out and study it.
thusspakezuska | February 17, 2007I got an announcement over the WEPAN listserv about a National Research Council workshop:
I am pleased to inform you about a National Research Council workshop on "Understanding Interventions that Encourage Minorities to Pursue Research Careers: Major Questions and Appropriate Methods" that will be held on May 3-4, 2007, at the National Academies in Washington , D.C.
A pdf file included with the email announcement says of the target audience:
If you are a PI, program administrator, mentor, project evaluator, or human resource specialist, this workshop will inform and motivate your work…
thusspakezuska | February 15, 2007I have a friend who is always making up the most wonderful names for his female friends by adding the syllable "stress" to unusual words. My favorite was one he gave me after a nefarious piece of business: underminestress. Believe me, the person deserved it. Anyway, I say all this by way of explaining the word "geekstress" in my post title there. It's meant proudly and campily, the way my friend uses the modifier.
So: what does a true geekstress look like? We are in the process of finding out!
Kristin just posted this link to a contest on Inkling magazine:
In honor of all girl-geeks…
thusspakezuska | February 15, 2007You absolutely must read these two posts:
Tara at Aetiology writes about There's No Crying in Academia!
Her post was inspired by Am I A Woman Scientist? who wrote That Little Sucker Just Saved Your Life.
Both posts are about crying in the workplace - women do, men don't (usually). Men think women are weak when they do. But women are usually crying not because they feel weak, but because they are frustrated and/or angry. Am I A Woman Scientist? writes:
I have cried once in a professional setting, and come close to crying twice. All three times, it was a stress release, because I was quite…
thusspakezuska | February 15, 2007It's Girl Scout cookie season, and maybe that's why this appeals to me even more than I thought it would. Scouts, badges - what's not to love?
Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique
Read the launch announcement over at the World's Fair.
It's open to anybody who considers themselves to be any sort of a science communicator, broadly defined:
For the propogation of an ideal where science communicators can meet firstly, for drinks; secondly, for communicating; and ultimately, for networking.
It's not yet clear how "Above Average Physique" is to be…
thusspakezuska | February 14, 2007I hope everyone is enjoying the course so far. I'm having a good time, and I'm looking forward to some of the readings coming up. Speaking of which, all the readings for week 2 come from Building Inclusive Science: Connecting Women's Studies and Women in Science and Engineering special issue, Women's Studies Quarterly (28:1-2). You can find the full list of readings on the syllabus.
Week 2 takes place two weeks after week 1, on Tuesday, February 28. I figure we all need a little break inbetween and I need to allow time for migraines and such. Plus time to actually do the readings and…
thusspakezuska | February 13, 2007This is the third of three discussion posts for Week 1 of Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. You can find all posts for this course by going to the http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/archives.php>archives and clicking on "Joy of Science" under in the Category section.
This post deals with the readings by Hubbard, Spanier, and Keller, as well as the NSF report "Beyond Bias and Barriers".
Ruth Hubbard, Bonnie Spanier, and Evelyn Fox Keller each made the transition from practicing scientist to feminist critic of science. Hubbard addresses an issue that bothered me greatly when I…
thusspakezuska | February 12, 2007This is the second of three discussion posts for Week 1 of Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. You can find all posts for this course by going to the archives and clicking on "Joy of Science" under in the Category section.
This post deals with the readings by Silverman and by Wenneras & Wold, as well as the NSF report "Beyond Bias and Barriers".
These readings deal with two major issues that dog women throughout their careers in science and engineering: the wage gap and gender bias in peer review. Lest you think the data in the Silverman piece are out of date, consider the…
thusspakezuska | February 12, 2007This is the first of three discussion posts for Week 1 of Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. You can find all posts for this course by going to the archives and clicking on "Joy of Science" under in the Category section.
This post deals with the readings by Eisenhart & Finkel and Brainard & Carlin.
"Women (Still) Need Not Apply" by Eisenhart and Finkel and "A Six-Year Longitudinal Study of Undergraduate Women in Engineering and Science" by Brainard and Carlin seem to be in conflict with each other. Can "compensatory strategies" like women in engineering (WIE) programs make…
thusspakezuska | February 12, 2007On the syllabus, I listed some questions for consideration when analyzing the readings for this week:
Why might women want to become scientists or engineers? Would their possible motivations differ from, or be in addition to, things that might make men want to become scientists or engineers?
I tried to keep these questions in mind as I wrote my discussion pieces for this week. If they inspire you for any of your comments, that's cool. The discussion piece will appear in several posts, as I find I am too wordy for one post.
And in that regard, let me just say that the professor has got…
thusspakezuska | February 12, 2007Welcome to the first day of our course on "Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science". This post will be a presentation of the summaries for each of this week's assigned readings. If you were not able to do the readings or couldn't get access to the books, I hope this post will give you a good flavor of what the week's readings were all about.
You can reference the course syllabus for more details about the readings in the whole course and the course structure. Here's the initial post about the course. And here are some guidelines about how I'll post on readings and what we should strive…
thusspakezuska | February 11, 2007It's almost time for class to start, and people will want to comment on the posts I'll be making. I thought I'd offer a few guidelines for "class discussion".
There will be two basic types of posts for each set of readings. One post will include the citation/summary/analyses of each assigned reading. There will be at least one additional post for these readings in which I will offer some discussion of the readings in relation to one another and/or to other material of my choosing.
You are invited to comment, as usual, on either post. On the citation/summary/analysis post, I especially…
thusspakezuska | February 11, 2007What is it with the techie women pin-up calendar business?
First, we had the loathesome Geek Gorgeous calendar.
Then came the misbegotten IT Screen Goddess calendar.
Now Skookumchick brings us news of young women engineers at the University of Illinois who have posed, scantily clad and nearly naked in some cases, for a pinup calendar.
Here's what I had to say in the past about such calendars:
The participants think they are saying to the world, "Look, I'm smart AND sexy!"
But what they are actually saying to the world is, "Look! No matter how smart I ever am, you can count on me not to…
thusspakezuska | February 10, 2007Young Female Scientist asks, Is Science A Free Country?
It seems that those who criticize the scientific system are assumed to be bad scientists.
Surely, goes the assumption, they are not successful, and that has made them bitter. Their concerns are irrelevant.
I highly recommend her brief, eloquent essay addressing this topic. She locates scientists inbetween anti-scientists and science-worshippers. Anti-scientists are obviously problemmatic; science worshippers are a tad unrealistic. But do scientists get it just right, like Baby Bear's porridge for Goldilocks? Not quite. I won't…
thusspakezuska | February 10, 2007My laptop appears to be suddenly dying, one component at at time...first the touchpad went away, and now the keyboard doesn't work. I can still operate it with an external mouse and keyboard but I'm afraid it's about to die on me completely. Fortunately I have everything backed up but if it does die, I'm going to be offline for a few days till I either get it repaired or buy a new computer. I'm sure it will cost so much to get it repaired it will almost be enough to buy a new computer, but I really can't afford a new computer right now. Dammit.
If you do not see postings on Monday, Feb…